The new Battlestar Galactica prequel will reveal the technology of “the Bill Gates of Caprica”, promises the show’s producer, while also highlighting technology’s uneven distribution.

“If you look at the tech that ordinary people have access to in the shows, you’ll see rotary phones, console radios, big CRT monitors, clunky answering machines…one of the things that’s happening on Caprica is this inequity of access to the latest advancements…”

Jane Espenson also wrote two episodes of Battlestar Galactica and served as its co-executive producer, and wrote for Firefly, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Dollhouse. But she promises the new series (which premieres Friday) will touch on the technological divide between rich and poor, saying “Our characters are hugely invested in these issues in very personal ways; I don’t think we could avoid them if we wanted to…

“The main difference is that it’s set in the middle of a society that mostly doesn’t know it’s on the road to destruction… “